Tag: robert browning

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
 The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
 Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
 He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day
 Came back again for that! before it left,
 The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
 “Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!”

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d
 Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
 Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
 Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
 To view the last of me, a living frame
 For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
 And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”